I am not one of those anti-technology Luddites. In fact, I was one of the first people with a VCR (1978) and a non-toy PC (1985) in my circle of family and friends. In fact, I like gadgets!

But I've declared my home a TiVo free zone. I don't care how much I hear about "TiVoing" this or that. Where some people see a device that streamlines and simplifies television viewing, I see an infernal machine that makes YOU march to IT'S drummer. I already have two VCRs I can set to record any show I want.

I hate to see this so soon after reading about how the Okatie River is more polluted, and because I happen to love oysters. But Savannah's WTOC channel 11 says 2 area women are dead after eating tainted shellfish.

State officials aren't saying much at this point other than two women with weak immune systems have died, but they don't know which businesses the women got them from. They think the oysters may have come from the Gulf of Mexico, but aren't 100% sure yet.

I'm a Keith Olbermann fan. Maybe not as big a fan as Tim Wood or Ernie Smith are, but his slightly left of center slant on MSNBC is a nice change of pace from the usual cable news entrees. Bombastic? He can be. Hates President Bush too much? The thought's crossed my mind. And his digs at Bill O'Reilly can get a little juvenile.

His politics are apparently why the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News Channel) decided to print a story today that JOKED about Olbermann opening a letter in his home Tuesday that contained a suspicious white powder.

With apologies to WC and LB, who tried giving discussions on government here a Low Country flavor, here's a sign that all politics ain't local!

Joe Scarborough, the cable TV news guy who used to be a GOP Congressman from Florida, is now advising... no, BEGGING Republican incumbents to "blame Bush" if they want to get re-elected. He claims the President's abandoned the party anyway, so stop pretending:

"(Some) of the conservatives who put Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich in power... (now) mutter that their leader's governing style looks more like Jimmy Carter's every day -- and among that crowd, there is no harsher insult."

I've never written a blatantly original political post before... there's always a first!

How do you treat a country that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 called home? How do you look at a nation whose official state religion is Wahhabi Islam, which runs the schools that teach kids that the US is the Great Satan and Israel and the Jews should be vaporized?

According to an AP story, exterminators and entomologists have been finding yellow jacket nests across Alabama that are HUGE. The one in the picture below filled up the passenger compartment of an abandoned car!